Focus peaking challenge

This is a native dancing demo at Chasco Fiesta here in Florida. I was using Minolta 135mm I think. Bright sun plus same color attire as peaking colors plus moving subject made this a challenge. Yellow or red was not good. Focus is not perfect but not bad considering conditions. Had to laugh when realised what I was trying to do.

In this kind of situation, you could try shooting in RAW+Jpeg, setting the Jpeg to B&W. This makes seeing the Focus Peaking easy. The Jpeg will be in B&W but the RAW file will have all the information.

Thanks for the tips. I use mid in red normally than tried yellow(don't ask me why) than figured white is the one. Too late he was done dancing. The raw jpg in B&W would have worked. I always shoot raw. Should've could've maybe next time. Things happen to fast for my old brain but still having fun.

In this kind of situation, you could try shooting in RAW+Jpeg, setting the Jpeg to B&W. This makes seeing the Focus Peaking easy. The Jpeg will be in B&W but the RAW file will have all the information.

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very true, on sunny days is a bit hard to shoot in MF from the nex screen, in these circunstancias need a viewfinder, but not bad these shots. Shoot in Raw, B/W is the best way.

In this kind of situation, you could try shooting in RAW+Jpeg, setting the Jpeg to B&W. This makes seeing the Focus Peaking easy. The Jpeg will be in B&W but the RAW file will have all the information.

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Is this possible on the 5N? I think if I try to change to a B&W mode on my 5N it tells me I have to be in a JPEG only mode. I normally shoot RAW+JPEG, but to play around with any of the other shooting modes I have to go into JPEG only.

Is this possible on the 5N? I think if I try to change to a B&W mode on my 5N it tells me I have to be in a JPEG only mode. I normally shoot RAW+JPEG, but to play around with any of the other shooting modes I have to go into JPEG only.

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I shoot RAW only on my 5N and if I select the B&W creative style I get a B&W LCD/EVF preview, a B&W review of the pic in-camera and a color RAW file when I import them to the camera.

I shoot RAW only on my 5N and if I select the B&W creative style I get a B&W LCD/EVF preview, a B&W review of the pic in-camera and a color RAW file when I import them to the camera.

I shoot mostly in A mode if that makes any difference.

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Similarly, I always shoot in Raw when had the nex5n, as I mentioned before, using legacy lenses on sunny days is a bit difficult to distinguish the peaking by the brightness of the screen, so I used this technique,shots in raw and B/W, peaking yellow/red, now in the nex5r or 7, do the same.

My bad. I see now I was going into High Contrast Mono under "Picture Effect" not the B&W under "Creative Style". Have it all figured out now, I'll have to try this next time I'm in a tough peaking situation. My rokkor doesn't seem very "contrasty" indoors for peaking, but outside it really lights up. Can anybody shed some light on the actual differences in low, medium, and high peaking? I usually keep mine at medium, do you get more/less crisp depending on this setting? Or is it just for ease of sight?

Sorry if this constitutes a thread-jack, I'll start a new thread with my questions if needed. Just figured they were kind of on topic.

I've found that some lenses peak better than others because the lens itself renders a scene with more contrast than other lenses might, so a lower peaking setting works well for those lenses.

Generally speaking, the less light there is the less peaking you get so you (I) need to turn it up in those situations. The EVF shows less peaking than the LCD does, and magnified view shows less peaking than normal view for either the EVF or the LCD.

Aperture can also effect the amount of peaking you see. It all depends on the situation.

I don't know if you have experienced this. When I shoot some manual Rokkor lenses on my NEX-7, some areas that light up with level peaking are totally out of focus in the actual photo. I have had it a few times on foreground objects in particular. I have peaking set to high and the out of focus peaking was most pronounced on my Rokkor 135mm f/2.8 [4/4].

Jaf- try turning down the peaking level to mid or low and see how that works for you. On high setting, under certain lighting levels there may be enough contrast to make the peaking lines show, but those areas are actually outside the depth of field set on the lens.

In other words the peaking sees the contrast in an area 20 meters deep, but the DOF on the lens is only set to 5 meters deep. Everything looks to be in focus, but really isn't because of a shallow DOF setting. With a MF lens the camera has no way of knowing what aperture is set, it just reacts to the quantity of light hitting the sensor.

I think I may have run into this issue yesterday. Took my new SEL50 for a walk with family and in the majority of shots (4-5 out of about 8) the focus seems to have been on the coats rather than on the eyes. I used medium peaking but only to verify that I achieved focus (no manual focusing).

Normally I would think the lens was front or rear focusing but I tested it to death. Of course it's possible that it's focusing well at short test distances and front focusing at longer lengths but I tend to think the focusing in camera isn't very precise.

Normally I would think the lens was front or rear focusing but I tested it to death. Of course it's possible that it's focusing well at short test distances and front focusing at longer lengths but I tend to think the focusing in camera isn't very precise.

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Tough one. I would have thought that contrast detection focusing is less prone to front or back focusing. I have had real problems with misaligned focusing on a phase detection system, to the extent that I had to have it retuned (incidentally on the T2i) - but never on a contrast detection system.

Sometimes it's hard to know exactly where the camera is focusing, even if it is accurate on that point. Therefore, manual focusing is often the best option when you need pin-point accuracy. Such as portraiture.

EDIT:

By the way, I had a chance to play around with level peaking on my Rokkor 50/1.4 yesterday. I found it was accurate in most situations. There was one situation where out of focus areas was often lit up. That was naked branches against the sky (or another bright background such as reflective water). Perhaps the level peaking algorithms interpreted these as high contrast areas and therefore in focus. Once you know it, it quite easy to work around.

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